About

Welcome to YumYoga

I love yoga. I love food. My passion for these 2 parts of life brought about this blog, where I’ll share with you recipes and yoga for a healthy, happy life. Eat veggies, drink juice and practice yoga!

YUMaste!
~Rita

Close to Food

I grew up close to my food, literally. I grew up on the outskirts of a mid-sized city in Hungary where we lived with my grandma who spent her days tending to a several acre garden. This garden was really something. We had pear and apple trees, cherry, sour cherry and apricot… I even planted a walnut tree when I was 3. My parents told me that it was special, because walnut trees were slow-growers and it took a person’s lifetime for the tree to reach maturity. To this day that tree is still my tree, still growing. I have vivid memories of waiting for the strawberries to sweeten in early summer, and for the raspberries to ripen later in the season. It was not uncommon for my cousins and I to head out to the very back of the garden to the raspberry patch on a late-summer evening and fill up before dinner eating the delicious berries right off the bushes! That’s right, right off the bushes – since we didn’t use any chemicals or pesticides there was no need to wash them! I remember “crush” when the grapes were harvested, and eating delicious baked squashes and pumpkins in the fall, when my grandma would also put away fruits and vegetables for the winter by making her own preserves. When I was very little and my grandpa was still alive, they even kept livestock – just a couple of chickens, a cow, they may have had a pig at one point. The chickens would run around the backyard, the cow would graze out back. Fried chicken for lunch would mean one less chicken running around, but there’d be new hatchling chicks and that was the Circle of Life. Don’t get me started on the eggs… the yolks were almost orange and huge! The taste was completely different than the eggs (or chicken, for that matter) I have eaten since… Local. Fresh. Organic. Seasonal. Real Food.

I also never grew up not being able to eat anything or thinking that I wasn’t supposed to eat anything. We had dessert every day. And bread. Fresh, crispy, crusty, fluffy inside, warm and fresh deliciousness with nearly every meal. Try telling that to anyone these days and they’d roll their eyes and say, “yeah right.” As Michael Pollan said, “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”

Drifting Away

Then came adolescence and my move to California with my mom and step-dad at the age of 8. I managed to not know what McDonald’s or a french fry was until I was almost 9. In the US came a fascination with television after going from 2 channels to 80+ channels, some that played cartoons ALL DAY LONG. (Soon after came my first pair of glasses…) Even though my mom continued to cook dinner every night, I was introduced to the mystery that was American food slowly but surely through my friends. Things like macaroni and cheese, marshmallows, frosting that will sit at room temperature in a can, and a hundred kinds of potato chips. The strange line-up of manufactured, engineered, man-made food, in sizes larger than I’d ever seen before. Welcome to America.

I do have to say that there’s something really cool about some foods being super-size. To this day my step-dad tells the story of us going to dinner at a “steak & seafood” place Blarneystone’s. We were celebrating my Straight A’s report card and I got to pick out any lobster I wanted from the tank. I picked the largest one, which apparently may or may not have won in a wrestling match if we met under different circumstances (I was still 8 years old). And I ate every last piece of that delicious crustacean. Now, I think naturally giant apples and tomatoes are cool. Amidst all of this, likely owing to my mom’s packed lunches and home-cooked dinners, I was always the Skinny Kid.

Fast-forward to college and dorm-life for a year without a kitchen – yikes. Then a boyfriend whose best intentions lead to way too much eating out at Chili’s, Outback, Applebee’s and TGI Friday’s, and meant appetizers and desserts at every meal when his parents joined us for our weekly Sunday night dinner out. Looking back, I realize I’ve never eaten so much food in my life, and it wasn’t like I enjoyed it that much… Thankfully I was always active which is likely what kept me, if not the “skinny kid,” at least still in decent shape through those years. Post-college life got busier, but as the Nutrition & Health buyer for HSN The Home Shopping Network I was in a field that I was very passionate about. The job also allowed me to travel and have amazing meals with friends and coworkers and I continued to cultivate my nutrition education and appreciation for food….

A Return to What’s Real

Then came my fateful meeting with Yoga. I went to my first Bikram class because I thought it would be a good antidote to all the running and cross training I was doing which made me sore all the time. It turned out to be so much more than that and I was hooked. The practice gave me not only a physical challenge like no other, but also a mental clarity and ease I had never experienced before. Upon my move to Minnesota I discovered CorePower Yoga studios and their community and within a year I traded in my gym membership for teacher training – I haven’t looked back since. My yoga practice has had the most profound impact on my life, from my attitude and interactions with everyone around me, to my diet.

In many ways yoga is a practice of mindfulness. The practitioner is encouraged to be deliberate with their slow, steady breaths and intentional with their movements. Focusing the eyes and gaze and calming the mind deepen the experience of the physical movements or asanas. Through this process the outcome often is a feeling of lightness, clarity and inner-peace. Gradually I started to broaden the focus of this intentional breathing, moving, gazing and thinking to outside the boundaries of my body, my mat and the studio. I would typically practice in the evenings and would leave the studio feeling amazingly vibrant and purified, and hungry for dinner. The thought of putting something un-pure and unhealthy into my body just felt wrong. The more I practiced, the more mindful I became about what I ate.

A Note on Meat

My path to vegetarianism was gradual and almost accidental. Through my “mindful eating” I realized I was eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and barely any meat and rarely fish. Then one fateful meal at the “it” restaurant in town (remember I’m still a foodie!) in the middle of an entrée of the chef’s special I made an unexpected connection between the innocent, small and likely peaceful little creature that had been my meal and my love-bug of a dog Jack. At that moment something in my brain clicked. The yogic practice of non-harming and non-violence, ahimsa, hit home. Coincidentally when you open up to a thought or possibility, the universe reveals itself to you in incredible ways and I ran across much information and literature over the next several months regarding the health implications of eating meat, the environmental impacts of raising livestock, and the ethical outcry against the cruelty of the factory farming industry. I’m not dogmatic and believe this is an extremely personal choice for everyone but one I am happy to make with every meal.

Throughout this journey I continued to love to eat and cook and thus began my experiments in the kitchen that birthed Yum Yoga. Cooking without meat has introduced me to so many wonderfully interesting ethnic cuisines, ingredients and cooking methods that I’ve been blown away by the possibilities of healthy eating. Like the practice of yoga and my teaching, I want to share this with those who are interested in mindful eating and living. I hope you’ll join me

C2 Yoga

Date: February, 22nd 2018 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

CorePower Yoga 2 – Open Power Yoga: CorePower Yoga is a truly unique yoga practice based on intuition rather than tradition. A heated, climate controlled Vinyasa flow practice, CorePower Yoga heals, detoxifies and exhilarates the body and mind with emphasis on movement, balance and intention. A great class for students who are ready to take the next step in their journey, CorePower Yoga 2 connects the body to the mind and spirit through intense flow and Ujjayi breathing techniques, helping students get to the “Core” of their being.